PHOENIX — Fewer than 48 hours after faltering down the stretch in a frustrating loss, the Lakers trailed the short-handed Phoenix Suns by 12 points with less than seven minutes left.
Yes, those Suns – a team that had scored the fewest points per game in the NBA over its past 10 games (101.7), while shooting a league-worst 41% from the field over that stretch.
Those Suns – who were without their top two scorers, All-Star guard Devin Booker (hip strain) and forward Dillon Brooks (fractured hand) – who had failed to breach 82 points in back-to-back losses before facing the Lakers on Thursday night. That was before, as the Suns (34-26) overcame their manpower issues and handed the Lakers (34-24) their third straight loss, 113-110, when Royce O’Neale made a 3-pointer with 0.9 seconds remaining to help stave off the Lakers’ late comeback bid.
Suns guard Grayson Allen milked the clock before driving into the paint and scooping the ball out to Collin Gillespie in the corner – who quickly funneled the ball to an open O’Neale on the left wing, where he calmly made the Suns’ 22nd 3-pointer of the night to win it.
Austin Reaves had a clean look from the corner as the final buzzer sounded, but the ball bounced off the front of the rim. Luka Doncic’s near-triple-double (41 points, eight rebounds and eight assists) couldn’t make up for the same hallmarks of recent defeats: squandered leads and mental mishaps.
Allen paced the Suns with 28 points on 6-of-16 shooting from behind the arc, while Gillespie finished with 21 points on 6-of-11 shooting from long range. The Suns, who also benefitted from 15 offensive rebounds, shot 22 for 50 from deep (44%), outscoring the Lakers by 33 points from the perimeter.
The Lakers started 1 for 8 from 3-point range, falling behind by double-digits when Jarred Vanderbilt threw away an inbounds pass to complete back-to-back 3-pointers from O’Neale and Jalen Green for a 43-33 Phoenix lead.
Knotted at 49 at halftime, the Lakers turned in their best offensive stretch of the game to start the third quarter. Marcus Smart and Doncic sank short-range floaters, LeBron James converted a running layup and Deandre Ayton earned his first points of the game on an alley-oop slam to rattle off 11 unanswered points.
The Lakers led by as much as 13 points and held a 70-58 advantage with 5:25 left in the third quarter.
That cushion quickly became a three-point deficit at 78-75 when Suns forward Rasheer Fleming drained a 3-pointer. From the moment the Lakers took their 12-point advantage, the Suns squared the game away with a 36-18 run – including a 3-pointer from Gillespie, followed by a flagrant foul on Ayton, that allowed the Suns to open a 10-point lead.
The Lakers were down 12 with 6:28 left, but Doncic helped them mount a furious comeback in the final minutes – capped by a 3-pointer from Reaves that knotted the score at 108 with a minute left. O’Neale responded with a layup after an offensive rebound to take a 110-108, but LeBron James scored on a putback on the ensuing possession to tie it again with 22.7 seconds left.
The Lakers dropped to 11-16 this season against teams with .500 records or better, and Coach JJ Redick’s recipe for Reaves, Doncic and James playing together hasn’t yielded the results they need to steer clear of the play-in tournament (seeds 7-10).
With the playoffs on the horizon and a packed schedule ahead, the Lakers sit in sixth place in the Western Conference, just a game ahead of the Suns, who now own the head-to-head tiebreaker with a 3-1 season series win.
After another late-game lapse, the Lakers find themselves with more questions than answers.
More to come on this story.
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